The most common causes of medical malpractice lawsuits

Doctors in Texas and around the country face medical malpractice litigation when the care they provide fails to meet generally accepted medical standards and their patients suffer injury, loss or damage as a result. This type of lawsuit is often filed when doctors fail to diagnose a serious medical condition or diagnose the wrong condition. A delayed or missed diagnosis can result in patients being denied potentially life-saving treatment or suffering the side effects of unnecessary treatment. To prevail in court, medical malpractice patients must convince a jury that another doctor with the same set of facts would have made an accurate or timelier diagnosis.

The consequences of prescription drug interactions can be catastrophic, and this kind of medical mistake remains worryingly common despite improvements in the software used by doctors, hospitals and pharmacies. Surgical operations are closely monitored in hospitals, but thousands of patients every year undergo unnecessary surgery, have the wrong procedure performed on them or develop complications because a sponge or piece of medical equipment was left inside them.

The damages in medical malpractice can be especially high when anesthesiologists make mistakes or mothers or babies are badly injured during childbirth. These errors often happen because the anesthesiologists or doctors involved lacked experience or did not communicate effectively with other members of their medical teams.

The biggest challenge that medical malpractice plaintiffs face is establishing that their injuries were suffered as a direct result of the doctor or hospital error. This is because the defendants in these cases could point out that the plaintiffs were already sick. Personal injury attorneys with experience in this area may seek to establish this direct link by calling on specialists to scrutinize medical records and draw attention to lapses in judgement or questionable actions. Experts may then explain to juries how injuries could have been avoided if these mistakes had not been made.